I need some advice about data providers. I trade from London, UK and as a result find that many of the EOD data providers are issuing their data at 1:00am GMT (e.g. CSI) which is a problem. Its a bit late and I don't trust a fully automated system.

The second issue is that the data becomes available after the open of many of the electronic markets, and so the system cannot be run and orders placed at about 22:30 GMT when most markets are closed.

At present I use a live feed from Tradestation and produce text files for TB to read, so the run can be done as soon as the markets are closed. It also allows me to tailor the electronic daily bars open and close to reflect RTH where necessary.

I'll get to the point. TS is too cumbersome and unstable as a long term solution. Is there a data provider out there that allows fast turn around and tailoring of the daily bars. I have considered ESignal but have heard negative remarks about how clean the data is.

Looking at the Bloomberg site, I can't see that they cater for these requirements. Is there a supplier that is popular with the quant hedge funds?

I'm trying eSignal Pro, 20 minute delayed, on world futures. Hoping to construct my own daily bars with my own custom start time and stop time, and feed those daily bars into Blox. Theoretically this would let me run order generation 22 minutes after my custom chosen "market close time", which would be hours and hours before data is available from EOD vendors.

Yes, this requires custom software development, but fortunately I've included programming costs in my budget. I look at it as a straightforward way to convert (money) into (convenience). The custom start and stop times may even provide a trading edge, for example, electronic session data using pit session times.

I haven't done data-cleanliness tests yet, so I have no opinion about eSignal's superiority or inferiority to other vendors. I've signed up for essentially all their extra-cost futures data packages (for example, the London Metals Exchange addon) and pay USD 260/month total.

So far the biggest negative is that eSignal doesn't quote the South African Futures Exchange "SAFEX" in Johannesburg. I trade a few of the contracts there, so I'm pondering whether to drop those from my portfolio. Keeping them, versus finishing the trading day hours earlier, hmmm.

I am using RTH electronic data to back test for a couple of years (any further back and some data gets sparse) and I definately get better results than from 24hr electronic data. I would imagine, when order quantities start to increase, fills will be better (on average) when restricted to RTH.

I'm interested in the SA trading. Do you trade much outside the US/Europe?

sluggo wrote:I'm trying eSignal Pro, 20 minute delayed, on world futures. Hoping to construct my own daily bars with my own custom start time and stop time, and feed those daily bars into Blox. Theoretically this would let me run order generation 22 minutes after my custom chosen "market close time", which would be hours and hours before data is available from EOD vendors.

Yes, this requires custom software development, but fortunately I've included programming costs in my budget. I look at it as a straightforward way to convert (money) into (convenience). The custom start and stop times may even provide a trading edge, for example, electronic session data using pit session times.

I haven't done data-cleanliness tests yet, so I have no opinion about eSignal's superiority or inferiority to other vendors. I've signed up for essentially all their extra-cost futures data packages (for example, the London Metals Exchange addon) and pay USD 260/month total.

So far the biggest negative is that eSignal doesn't quote the South African Futures Exchange "SAFEX" in Johannesburg. I trade a few of the contracts there, so I'm pondering whether to drop those from my portfolio. Keeping them, versus finishing the trading day hours earlier, hmmm.

How is this project going may I ask? Holidays like MLK where many markets traded solid Electronic volume... And due to the exchange date procedure of calling todays trades tomorrows trades... None of todays action is available via CSI until tuesdays "super bar" release. Ones own data factory seems like the only way to get on top of this. How have you found the data relative bad prints / spikes etc? I suppose some form of anomaly screen would have to be part of the data collection.